Ramos v. Erwin et al

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
HOUSTON DIVISION
ALBERTO RAMOS,
Plaintiff,
VS.
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CIVIL ACTION NO. 4:23-CV-02517
SCOTT ERWIN, et al.,
Defendants.
MEMORANDUM & ORDER
Before the Court are Defendants’ Motion to Limit Discovery to Qualified Immunity (ECF
No. 93) and non-party City of Houston’s Motion to Quash Subpoena (ECF No. 92). For the reasons
that follow, the Court now DENIES both motions and ORDERS that the City of Houston comply
with the subpoena within FOURTEEN DAYS.
I. 	Background
This is a § 1983 suit arising from Plaintiff Alberto Ramos’ encounter with five Houston
Police Department Officers. Ramos brings § 1983 claims for false arrest and excessive force as
well as state tort claims. A full description of the facts, as alleged in Ramos’ complaint, can be
found in Ramos v. Erwin, 723 F. Supp. 3d 529, 535-37 (S.D. Tex. 2024).
Ramos filed suit in July 2023. In March 2024, this Court denied in part Defendants’
Motions to Dismiss on qualified immunity grounds. Defendants appealed this order. In December
2024, the Fifth Circuit affirmed “essentially for the reasons stated by the district court.” Ramos v.
Erwin, No. 24-20164, 2024 WL 5040984, at *1 (5th Cir. Dec. 9, 2024).
United States District Court
Southern District of Texas
ENTERED
June 26, 2026
Nathan Ochsner, Clerk
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II. 	Motion to Limit Discovery to Qualified Immunity
Defendants have moved to limit discovery to only that which is necessary to determine
qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage. They cite Asante-Chioke v. Dowdle, 103 F.4th
1126, 1130–31 (5th Cir. 2024) for the proposition that “[w]hen the district court cannot rule on
qualified immunity without further factual development, discovery is permitted only if it is
‘narrowly tailored to uncover only those facts needed to rule on the immunity claim.’” ECF No.
93 at 3 (quoting Asante-Chioke, 103 F.4th at 1130).
Asante-Chioke dealt with the defendant police officers’ appeal of the district court’s denial
of the defendants’ request to limit discovery to issues of qualified immunity. In that case, the
defendants moved to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaint based on qualified immunity. Asante-
Chioke, 103 F.4th at 1128. In the alternative, they moved to limit discovery to qualified immunity
issues in order to reassert the defense in a summary judgment motion. Id. The district court denied
both motions. Id. The defendants appealed only the denial of the motion to limit discovery. Id.
The Asante-Chioke court described the relationship between qualified immunity and
discovery as follows:
[A] party asserting the defense of qualified immunity is immune from discovery
that is avoidable or overly broad, and that when the district court is unable to rule
on the immunity defense without further clarification of the fact and when the
discovery order is narrowly tailored to uncover those facts needed to rule on the
immunity claim, an order allowing such limited discovery is neither avoidable nor
overly broad. If the complaint alleges facts to overcome the defense of qualified
immunity, the district court may then proceed under Lion Boulos [v. Wilson, 834
F.2d 504 (5th Cir. 1987)] to allow the discovery necessary to clarify those facts
upon which the immunity defense turns.
Asante-Chioke, 103 F.4th at 1131 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Because “the
defense of qualified immunity turn[ed] on” a disputed factual question, the court held that the
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district court’s denial of the defendants’ request to limit discovery was “tantamount to the denial
of qualified immunity” and an abuse of discretion. Id.
Defendants argue that Asante-Chioke requires district courts to limit discovery to qualified
immunity in every case, no matter how late in the process such a request is made or the induvial
circumstances of the qualified immunity defense. Defendants argue that the discovery Plaintiff
seeks from the Houston Police Department (HPD), which includes HPD policies and manuals,
other injury and use-of-force reports against the Defendant officers, and internal investigations
into use of excessive force, racial bias or discrimination, or fabrication of evidence by any of the
Defendant officers are irrelevant to qualified immunity and therefore not discoverable until after a
ruling on qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage (if then).
The Court does not read Asante-Chioke so broadly. As Plaintiff points out, this case is
distinct from Asante-Chioke in several ways. First, the Asante-Chioke defendants did not appeal
the denial of their motion to dismiss on qualified immunity grounds, whereas in this case,
Defendants appealed this Court’s denial of qualified immunity in April of 2024. Second, the
Asante-Chioke defendants moved for limited discovery immediately upon the denial of their
motion to dismiss, whereas Defendants in this case waited more than a full year after the Fifth
Circuit affirmed the denial of their motion to dismiss to raise their request to limit discovery to
qualified immunity. At this point, discovery had been ongoing for months. Defendants also have
not moved for summary judgment on qualified immunity in the year and a half since the Fifth
Circuit dismissed their appeal, despite having repeatedly stated to the Court that all evidence they
believe is necessary to determine qualified immunity has been produced. When questioned at the
hearing about this timing, Defendants replied that they intended to move for summary judgment
on the dispositive motions deadline—three months before trial. They indicated that discovery
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could be reopened if the Court again denied qualified immunity, which they acknowledged would
require further delay of trial and additional summary judgment motions.
Finally, Defendants have not pointed to a specific, disputed factual question on which
qualified immunity turns. In Asante-Chioke, qualified immunity “turn[ed] on whether [the
defendant] continued. . . firing shots at Asante-Chioke after he became incapacitated.” 103 F.4th
at 1131. Limited discovery was necessary because it would uncover “whether [the defendant] fired
any shots; how many if so; and when, in relation to Asante-Chioke’s actions and death.” Id. In
other words, the district court “could not rule on the immunity claim without this discovery.” Lion
Boulos v. Wilson, 834 F.2d 504, 509 (5th Cir. 1987). Here, by contrast, Defendants have not
pointed to specific, disputed facts on which the qualified immunity defense turns. Instead,
Defendants argue broadly that qualified immunity rests on “the objective reasonableness of the
officers’ actions during the specific encounter with Plaintiff.” ECF No. 93 at 3 (citing Graham v.
Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 397 (1989)). But this merely restates the legal test for claims of excessive
force and false arrest—it does not dispute a specific factual allegation stated in Plaintiff’s
complaint.
The discovery Defendants object to in this case illustrates the problem with Defendants’
argument as applied to this case. Even were the Court to limit discovery to the question of qualified
immunity, the Court agrees with Plaintiff that the discovery he seeks is relevant to qualified
immunity. Plaintiff alleges that he was stopped by police on the basis of his race, tackled, hogtied,
and eventually arrested in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. As Plaintiff points out, the
Fifth Circuit has stated that an official’s “[f]ailure to follow departmental policy makes actions
more questionable, because it is questionable whether it is objectively unreasonable to violate such
a departmental rule.” Cruz v. Cervantez, 96 F.4th 806, 814 (5th Cir. 2024) (quoting Rice v.
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ReliaStar Life Ins. Co., 770 F.3d 1122, 1133 (5th Cir. 2014)). See also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S.
730, 731 (2002) (considering an Alabama Department of Corrections regulation in evaluating the
reasonableness of force used by the Defendant prison guards). HPD policies related to arrests and
use of force are therefore relevant to the fact-intensive inquiry into the objective reasonableness of
Defendants’ actions. The Court also agrees with Plaintiffs that prior reports and/or complaints
against the Defendant officers for similar conduct are relevant to showing the absence of mistake—
which goes to the reasonableness of Defendants’ conduct, their knowledge of constitutional
requirements, and their states of mind. The Court concludes that the discovery Plaintiff seeks is
both relevant and proportional to the needs of the case.
In short, the Court declines to grant Defendants’ eleventh-hour request to limit discovery
to qualified immunity in a case where Defendants delayed making this request for more than a
year after the denial of their motion to dismiss, have no intent to file an early motion for summary
judgment on qualified immunity, have not identified specific factual disputes that need to be
resolved, and are seeking to avoid discovery that in any case, the Court concludes is relevant to
the qualified immunity analysis.
III. 	Motion to Quash
On January 22, Plaintiffs served a subpoena to the City of Houston requesting the following
documents:
(1) All records, communications, and materials (formal and informal) concerning
21 separate policy topics in use by the Houston Police Department on July 11, 2021;
(2) Any and all reports regarding injuries to persons arrested by any of the
Defendants throughout their entire tenure with HPD; (3) Any and all documents
concerning use-of-force incidents conducted by or involving any Defendant from
July 10, 2016 to the present; and (4) All documents pertaining to any administrative,
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quasi-judicial, or other investigation into allegations of excessive force, racial
bias/discrimination, or fabrication of evidence/reports involving any Defendant.
ECF No. 95, Ex. 2 (First Subpoena). Service was effected by certified mail. Id. Defendants
moved to quash that subpoena on the basis that service by certified mail was improper. See ECF
No. 76. Plaintiff served the subpoena again by personal service on March 13. ECF No. 95, Ex. 1
(Second Subpoena). The subpoena contained a deadline of March 26. Id.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45(d)(3) governs the quashing or modifying of subpoenas.
The Court must quash or modify a subpoena that “(i) fails to allow a reasonable time to comply;
(ii) requires a person to comply beyond the geographical limits specified in Rule 45(c); (iii)
requires disclosure of privileged or other protected matter, if no exception or waiver applies; or
(iv) subjects a person to undue burden.” Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 45(d)(3)(A)(i)-(iv).
The City of Houston seeks to quash the subpoena on the grounds that (1) the subpoena does
not provide a reasonable time to comply, (2) the subpoena imposes undue burden on nonparty
HPD, and (3) the subpoena is disproportionate and irrelevant.
The Court agrees with Plaintiff that fourteen days is a reasonable time for compliance—
particularly where, as here, the City of Houston had actual notice of the documents sought
beginning on January 22. See Hossfeld v. Allstate Ins. Co., No. 4:24-MC-142, 2025 WL 2323918,
at *3 (E.D. Tex. Aug. 12, 2025) (“[C]ourts throughout this Circuit have routinely held that fourteen
days is a reasonable time period to respond to a subpoena.”) (collecting cases). The Court likewise
agrees with Plaintiff that the City has not met its burden to show a specific undue burden imposed
by the subpoena. Plaintiff’s requests are highly specific and could likely be satisfied by simple
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keyword searches. For the reasons previously stated, the Court also agrees with Plaintiff that the
requested documents are relevant and discoverable.1
The City additionally asserts privilege based on confidentiality provisions in the Texas
Government Code. However, this Court previously rejected this argument. See Carnaby v. City of
Houston, No. 4:08-cv-1366, 2008 WL 4546606, at *2-3 (S.D. Tex. Oct. 10, 2008) (Ellison, J.)
(holding that Texas statutory privilege is not controlling in federal court). The Court declines to
reconsider its prior decision on this question. There is a protective order in place in this case that
is sufficient to ensure the protection of any confidential documents. The City’s arguments about
admissibility of the requested information under the Federal Rules of evidence are irrelevant at the
discovery stage, because information need not be admissible to be discoverable.
IV. 	Conclusion
For these reasons, the Court DENIES Defendants’ Motion to Limit Discovery to Qualified
Immunity (ECF No. 93) and DENIES the City of Houston’s Motion to Quash (ECF No. 92). The
Court further ORDERS that the City of Houston comply with the subpoena within FOURTEEN
DAYS.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
1 HPD also argued at the hearing on this Motion that many of the requested HPD policies are
available online, rendering a third-party subpoena inappropriate. But the Court is not persuaded.
Plaintiffs have requested the specific policies that were operative at the time of the alleged incident,
that is, July of 2021. Plaintiffs have no way of knowing whether the current policies are the same
policies that were active at this time. Additionally, publicly available government policies may
differ somewhat from the policy documents available to government employees, particularly when
the policies address sensitive topics like use of force by police. Plaintiff is not required to assume
that all the documents he seeks correspond to the documents that are available on the department’s
website.
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Signed at Houston, Texas on June 26, 2026.
_______________________________
Keith P. Ellison
United States District Judge
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